Monday, April 12, 2010

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Quick note on scissors: If you do a lot of cutting it's likely you've abandoned shears in favor of a rotary cutter and xacto blades. While those are awesome tools that I also use a lot, I'd like to say that getting a good pair of large scissors does wonders for cutting. I actually get better detail and control with good scissors than I do with xacto blades.

I love Kai scissors. Right now I have a Kai 7230 and it is perfect. Yes they are 60 dollars, but I'd go through that many 8 dollar pairs in a couple of years. A couple of years of blisters and bruises and pinched nerves from crummy scissors that don't stay sharp very long. Kai's are well balanced, comfortable, and cut awesome. The only downside I've noticed is that they are so sharp you have to be very careful with them.

Here is the sea turtle from the Saturday patterns in the process of being cleaned up. I untaped the original and redrew a larger one. I made some cut and fold adjustments to get a better 3D shape. He is half finished being colored in photoshop at this point. I think I will change his beak because I like the middle patterns beak more than my current color one. His face is kinda droopy instead of cute.

One reason I am getting into this(beyond fun) is because I have done quite a bit of work with Pepakura in the past. I have enjoyed using that program to convert game models into papercraft. However I find Pepakura's results overly complex to put together, with products that are very rigid looking.I've actually been too afraid to try freehand paper modeling because I thought it seemed too hard. I just needed to try it and play for awhile for things to start clicking and making sense. Learn through doing and don't be afraid of messing up. That is important and I always forget it. I'm happy to be reminded again.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Spent a bit of time today playing with paper creatures. Pretty crude forms, but ones that I may clean up to make patterns later. I really enjoy crinkling up sheets just trying to make organic shapes happen in the plane or taking scrap pieces and making a creature from the shapes that came together. The happy rhino and the creepy chicken head are examples of that kind of play.

I'll try to remember to make a video next time I do this so you can see what I'm thinking about when I create these prototypes.